Stat Watch: Your Regular Table Is Ready, Ma’am

View more from the

In a study by Brent McFerran of the University of British Columbia and colleagues, dieters in a restaurant-like setting were offered menu suggestions by a thin waitress. She also donned a “fat suit” and made recommendations to a different group of dieters. More diners acted on the overweight server’s advice. That’s because the dieting patrons identified more with the heavier server, say the authors. This suggests that restaurants may benefit from having greater weight diversity among service providers.

Partner Center

The email and password entered aren’t matching to our records. Please try again, or reset your password. If you have a username from our previous site, start by using that. Please See our FAQ for more.

If you are signing in for the first time on the new HBR.org but have an existing account, please enter your existing user name and password to migrate your account.Please see Frequently Asked Questions for more information.